Clinicians who work with groups can find it challenging to get them to open up, examine themselves, and engage with each other. Floor checks address this need. They are user-friendly for both therapist and client and take the guesswork out of incorporating experiential work into programming and practice. Floor Checks get clients out of their chairs, on their feet, grounded in the room, and connected with each other. Floor Checks activate the social engagement system in service of healing. They give participants practice in tuning in on themselves and connecting in new, more satisfying ways.

Floor checks are psychoeducational. They incorporate the research that needs to be taught in recovering from cPTSD into a lively format that gets people connecting and sharing in meaningful and spontaneous ways. Floor Checks empower clients to become stakeholders in their recovery; they build the skills of emotional literacy, intelligence, and resilience.

Floor Checks teach about trauma, grief, and resilience as they simultaneously provide an interpersonal and community healing process. They can be easily adapted to be gender and culture-sensitive. They give therapists a clearly outlined process that builds momentum for change, teaches the skills of emotional regulation and literacy, and makes work more focused and contained.

A progression of floor checks in RTR-S can begin with The Feeling Floor Check. Then, a Symptom Floor Check brings forward the many ways cPTSD may manifest. From there, a wide variety of floor checks continue to break down and explore those symptoms, such as The Fear/Anxiety Floor Check, The Anger Floor Check, The Depression Floor Check, and so forth. Consolidating floor checks can be The Resilience Floor Check and The Post Traumatic Growth Floor Check. There are many possible floor checks in Sociometrics, The Living Stage, and Treating Adult Children of Relational Trauma that are specifically targeted to the treatment of adult relational trauma and addiction. There are also targeted floor checks for grief, resilience, and post-traumatic growth. (See RTR-Sociometrics.com for downloadable floor checks) Floor Checks also help clients “warm up” to simple, targeted role plays that emerge naturally through the combined experiential process. 

NOTE: Level One certificate holders are expected to stay within their practice range, which does not include trauma work, e.g., The Symptom Floor Check.